the Great Molasses Flood of 1919

[chiver78]

putting this link in CE, since this coming week is the 100th anniversary of the incident and there's current articles on it. enjoy the history lesson if you were otherwise unaware. 

Boston Globe Magazine - The Great Molasses Flood of 1919

The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 was Boston’s strangest disaster
100 years ago this month an enormous steel tank ruptured, sending a torrent of brown syrup on a deadly path through the North End.

Hollywood has made movies starring all manner of disasters, from rogue tornadoes and invading aliens to giant solar flares that fry the earth. But even the masters of make-believe haven’t conceived of anything as strange — or strangely devastating — as what happened that afternoon in January 1919.



One hundred years later, it’s a calamity that still seems as darkly comical as it is unimaginable: A 15-foot wave of molasses raced — yes, raced — through Boston’s North End. But what sounds like a B movie directed by Roger Corman is no joke: Twenty-one people died and dozens more were badly injured. Unsuspecting men, women, and children were smothered — asphyxiated, really — by a tsunami of viscous brown syrup, and when the bodies were finally recovered, the Suffolk County medical examiner said they looked “as though covered in heavy oil skins . . . eyes and ears, mouths and noses filled.”

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click the link above for the full article, which includes photos and interactive maps of the scope of the tragedy. 

[Tennesseer]

I remember walking around that area back in the late sixties and reading the marker about the incident.

Bizarre way to 'go'.

[engineerdoe]

I assumed you were posting this because it was in a book that I just read (cause you are reading my mind of course).  "A Head Full of Ghosts" by Paul Tremblay.

smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MTSKHKO/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o07_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It is a bizarre accident.

[chiver78]

ha! 

I've never heard of that book, but I have read the one mentioned in my link. that author is a pretty thorough historian. 

[engineerdoe]

The flood is just mentioned in the book as a way to back up the story of what is happening to the oldest daughter.  It is a good book though.

[Malarky]

I learned about this in 6th grade.  I had a teacher who used to gift us with what he called "priceless gems of useless information to file away for ever and ever."  This was one of them.  All these years later when some obscure fact comes up that I learned from him, I remember the phrase and the information.

[chiver78]

Jan 9, 2019 20:20:26 GMT -5 Malarky said:

I learned about this in 6th grade.  I had a teacher who used to gift us with what he called "priceless gems of useless information to file away for ever and ever."  This was one of them.  All these years later when some obscure fact comes up that I learned from him, I remember the phrase and the information.

if I didn't know you aren't originally from where you live, I'd he inclined to ask if said teacher also filed weather reports with the local news stations. that guy's quote was, when asked the date, "Today is X, a day like many days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times." 😁 I think your kids probably went to the other middle school, though....?

[Tennesseer]

Jan 9, 2019 20:20:26 GMT -5 Malarky said:

I learned about this in 6th grade.  I had a teacher who used to gift us with what he called "priceless gems of useless information to file away for ever and ever."  This was one of them.  All these years later when some obscure fact comes up that I learned from him, I remember the phrase and the information.

When I was a kid, I read my city's newspaper. I was interested even as an eight year old what was happening in the country and world.

Back then (late 1950s and 60s), when a news story could not fill up a column, the newspaper added trivia. I ate up the trivia. I imagine that was probsbly when I first learned of the Boston molasses disaster.

[empress of self-improvement]

I have no idea when I first learned about it. It was just something I always knew. My father being a history buff and teacher didn't help matters any.

[mollyanna58]

It's mentioned every time I am on a tourist trolley in Boston.

[happyhoix]

I heard a podcast about this a while back. Weird and also tragic. If you're going to have to die accidentally, at least it should have some dignity, not getting sucked under by a wave of sticky molasses.

These were the good old days when companies could operate without a lot of pesky government regulations, like tank standards, or tank integrity testing. 

[Malarky]

Jan 9, 2019 20:33:37 GMT -5 chiver78 said:

Jan 9, 2019 20:20:26 GMT -5 Malarky said:

I learned about this in 6th grade.  I had a teacher who used to gift us with what he called "priceless gems of useless information to file away for ever and ever."  This was one of them.  All these years later when some obscure fact comes up that I learned from him, I remember the phrase and the information.

if I didn't know you aren't originally from where you live, I'd he inclined to ask if said teacher also filed weather reports with the local news stations. that guy's quote was, when asked the date, "Today is X, a day like many days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times." 😁 I think your kids probably went to the other middle school, though....?

The did go to the "other" middle school.  New lines have been drawn and the kids on my street now go to the same one you probably attended.  You had a crappier facility but better school, better results IMO. 

[chiver78]

Jan 10, 2019 19:26:55 GMT -5 Malarky said:

Jan 9, 2019 20:33:37 GMT -5 chiver78 said:

if I didn't know you aren't originally from where you live, I'd he inclined to ask if said teacher also filed weather reports with the local news stations. that guy's quote was, when asked the date, "Today is X, a day like many days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times." 😁 I think your kids probably went to the other middle school, though....?

The did go to the "other" middle school.  New lines have been drawn and the kids on my street now go to the same one you probably attended.  You had a crappier facility but better school, better results IMO. 

wouldn't be the first time lines got redrawn. the current rec center was an elementary when I was that age, the line actually split my neighborhood two doors down. our rec center back then has since been razed to softball fields up near White Hen (deliberately avoiding the landmark school name). I have to ask, is my school still there as it was? I know your kids' school got redone, but I wasn't sure where mine was in priority with the new HS....which truly was already needed when I was going there.

[Malarky]

Jan 10, 2019 19:48:49 GMT -5 chiver78 said:

Jan 10, 2019 19:26:55 GMT -5 Malarky said:

The did go to the "other" middle school.  New lines have been drawn and the kids on my street now go to the same one you probably attended.  You had a crappier facility but better school, better results IMO. 

wouldn't be the first time lines got redrawn. the current rec center was an elementary when I was that age, the line actually split my neighborhood two doors down. our rec center back then has since been razed to softball fields up near White Hen (deliberately avoiding the landmark school name). I have to ask, is my school still there as it was? I know your kids' school got redone, but I wasn't sure where mine was in priority with the new HS....which truly was already needed when I was going there.

My taxes are about to go up significantly.  The override has been approved.  "Your school" is slated to be completely rebuilt.  I think in the field next to it like they did with the other.  I have mixed feelings.  All the other schools we've paid for have been too small for the number or students by the time they were finished.  They keep building multiple, enormous condo complexes.  And telling us "those people" don't have kids.  Yet class sizes keep increasing.  The elementary school in "South" was actually built to be added to, up and out and yet that will probably be an exclusion and razed in two or three years.

In terms of the HS, it's a beautiful building.  DD was a freshman in the old building and graduated from the new one.  If only they spent as much money on teachers as they did making it pretty and  the layers of administration I'd be OK with it.  It was overcrowded the day it was opened.  The only place they could hold a full school assembly is a quarter mile down the road at the football field.

[chiver78]

Jan 10, 2019 20:11:28 GMT -5 Malarky said:

Jan 10, 2019 19:48:49 GMT -5 chiver78 said:

wouldn't be the first time lines got redrawn. the current rec center was an elementary when I was that age, the line actually split my neighborhood two doors down. our rec center back then has since been razed to softball fields up near White Hen (deliberately avoiding the landmark school name). I have to ask, is my school still there as it was? I know your kids' school got redone, but I wasn't sure where mine was in priority with the new HS....which truly was already needed when I was going there.

My taxes are about to go up significantly.  The override has been approved.  "Your school" is slated to be completely rebuilt.  I think in the field next to it like they did with the other.  I have mixed feelings.  All the other schools we've paid for have been too small for the number or students by the time they were finished.  They keep building multiple, enormous condo complexes.  And telling us "those people" don't have kids.  Yet class sizes keep increasing.  The elementary school in "South" was actually built to be added to, up and out and yet that will probably be an exclusion and razed in two or three years.

In terms of the HS, it's a beautiful building.  DD was a freshman in the old building and graduated from the new one.  If only they spent as much money on teachers as they did making it pretty and  the layers of administration I'd be OK with it.  It was overcrowded the day it was opened.  The only place they could hold a full school assembly is a quarter mile down the road at the football field.

yikes good luck with that. I haven't heard much about assessments lately, as my parents aren't planning to retire there. they just paid their last (re)mortgage payment 11/1. and although they have been at each other's throats about what to renovate or not, since dad found E in his driveway a week after Thanksgiving, they are remarkably on the same page about unloading the house ASAP, before it kills both of them .

as far as the new HS, my sis and I got a tour before the first T-day rally. she student taught with a Ms M in the English wing, that school year was her last before retiring. we commented while walking around that it wasn't big enough. oy. and it's funny, the old HS had.lockers I never saw in use. my grad class was just 226.

as far as "my school", I'm shocked its still there as it is. that place is a damn fortress. and I saw on a town FB page within the past year, the principal while.i was there passed this year.